


What the Tide Drags (In/Out)

by RedAthena79



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Fix-It, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-17
Updated: 2017-05-17
Packaged: 2018-11-01 17:54:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10926996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedAthena79/pseuds/RedAthena79
Summary: Jedha City, Scarif, Alderaan were gone.  Gone where?





	What the Tide Drags (In/Out)

The energy that blasts forth from the Death Star obliterates all that it touches.  Or does it?  Galen Erso knew the energy released by his creation would be nigh incalculable.  But when pushed to give a number he gave a number, if only to satisfy the curiosity of his overseers and be allowed to return to his work. His calculations regarding the energy output weren’t a lie or even wrong per se.  But they ran short of the actual scope of the weapon’s effects.  Obliteration, yes.  But in what way?  Galen never lived to find the answer and died hoping no one ever would.

* * *

 

 

The beam hits and Cassian and Jyn are not consumed in fire nor crushed by the upheaval of the planet’s crust.  A heaviness surrounds and invades their bodies and builds and builds and builds.  Their lungs feel as if they’re inflated beyond capacity and have begun to tear at the immense pressure. From the outside they find themselves being pushed and pulled in every direction.  Tugged apart atom from atom and carried forward as a whole as if into hyperspace but deeper. For what feels both like an eternity and a split-second it is utter agony.

And then everything stops.

* * *

 

 

The Starkiller Base fires on the Hosnian System and the harnessed power of an entire planet’s worth of kyber crystals once again pulses out through the galaxy.  Once again things are pushed half-way between here and there and back again.

* * *

 

 

Cassian and Jyn drop away from each other as their deadened arms cannot keep them in the other’s embrace.  They lie on gasping on the cold sand. Waves lap gently at first at their ankles.  Then more forcefully at their calves.  Then a surge, rough, heavy and foamy sweeps up and the two cough and choke and struggle to make their already battered arms and legs obey them.  They claw their way over the wet and heavy sand on near useless hands and knees ignoring the way the slapping waves pull limp, white armored bodies further down the beach front until they disappear completely beneath the churning waters.  Once their hands feel more grass than sand they let themselves collapse once again.

Above them there is no sign of Galen Erso’s weapon and below them the ground no longer trembles.  They are still close enough to touch and so they do so. Hands entwined and on a beach littered with the dead of both comrades and enemies the two Rebels take a moment to rest.  


Not too far in the distance ships, Rebel and Imperial alike, that were caught in the path of the blast blink back into existence.  They reappear as dead durasteel weights in the Scarif sky.  And they plunge accordingly and slamming into ocean and reef and shore.

* * *

 

 

A small fleet of cargo ships traveling on a hyperspace route detects the sudden appearance of a mass shadow almost directly in its flight path.  They drop out of hyperspace and what they see almost they cannot believe.  In fact, they don’t believe it.  The fleet’s commander is the first to shake herself out of her stupor.  She goes to her private comms station and sends out three messages.  One to her supervisor at Corporate, one to her Galactic Senate liaison and the last to her contact in the Resistance with special instruction to immediately inform the General.

Alderaan in its entirety has reappeared. 

**Author's Note:**

> Naturally, this is not any of the three R1 fics I've been working on for the past two months. This is just me spending about forty-five minutes wondering what would have happened if the Death Star and Starkiller Base just vaporized stuff instead of turning it to so much rubble and fire.


End file.
